Thus Spied the Moon
by Antje
Summary: New moons can be as powerful as full moons. This is kept in mind as Carlton waits for his next vacation to begin, and Shawn's Q & A at the Citizen's Police Academy takes a terrific and unpredictable turn.
1. Chapter 1

Psych | Thus Spied the Moon  
Note One: Follows the same "psychverse" I first used in Apply Liberally at Sunrise, then in The Vintage Crimes of Christopher Sly. I don't think you need to have read either to read this.  
Note Two: Check my profile and/or Dreamwidth account for this story (and others) available as Kindle files.  
Pairings: Shawn/Carlton (established); Gus/Juliet (established)  
Warning One: This story doesn't have much plot. And it pretty much ignores Psych canon from Season Five on.  
Warning Two: This isn't really funny, and not themed like the show, or my other Psych fics.  
Warning Three: I have no beta: faults and mistaken corrections are accidental. I'll fix typos now and again.

-x-

I.  
_Back_

Shawn had won his colors. The gray had been stripped from interior walls. The dining room looked like a center of a daisy. The living room was white on three sides, orange-red on the last. The bathroom was bright blue. Everything still smelled clean and new. His shoulders and hands were still stiff from incessant days of rolling on paint, brushing along the trim, carrying gallons in, out, in again, until the pails were empty and he was almost done.

Almost.

The kitchen stayed a hazard. An old and rotted woman from the 1970s. She donned brown corduroy and vests that never buttoned. If she had let her dishes hang about, unwashed on the counter by the sink, she became a filthy shag carpet that had lain forever and soaked up crumbs, stains and history.

The brightest beacons of the kitchen were the two mugs on the counter, and the thriving little plant in the window named Brad. He was a tiny plant. He would stay so.

"Brad is a succulent, Shawn," Gus had provided—more unwanted information from that enormous brain gushing forth one factoid after another. Like ceaseless waterfalls, there came the information. Shawn had mistakenly referred to Brad as "crabgrass on deer spray." It was difficult, after a seemingly millennium-long friendship with Gus, to realize that whatever he said would be corrected. Not without fail, but regularly, and the regulation of correction was itself without fail.

"A succulent is a xerophyte—"

"You're a xerophyte if you don't get out of the way."

Gus promptly sidled from Shawn's path. A platter of grilled corn waited for no man. The dining room table had grown along with the colors on the walls, the amount of dried paint blotches on some of Shawn's lesser-liked clothes. Of the four of them, none knew how it came to be that they migrated to Carlton and Shawn's house the moment boredom—or the weekend—struck. But they snapped to it like triggered lightning. The bistro table, perfect for two, had morphed into a table with settings for four. The gravitation toward the house on Sunberry had become unimportant, but to Chief Vick it had become gladness (she was thankful not to see them gathered around the station in a quartet-shaped clump); and for Henry it had become a relief (he was thankful not to have them meeting anywhere near him).

Juliet and Gus devoted minutes, not hours, to pondering why it was they liked Carlton and Shawn's place. It wasn't that Carlton's furniture was more comfortable, that there were interesting objects to ogle, or that it smelled like baked apples and hickory. Most of the time, it smelled faintly of dirty socks with a hint of coffee, as though someone had dumped used filters, piled with soggy grounds, onto a heap of ancient laundry. The softness of the house eluded them. They didn't realize yet that it was the spread of time itself, the friendliness and comedy and atmosphere of love and relaxation that had grabbed them. The few times that Juliet and Gus had had Shawn and Carlton at their house, situations had crept into it, tension or the chicken overcooked or Lassiter and his partner were abruptly called in to investigate a heinous crime.

Shawn set the platter of grilled corn on the table, happy to be out of the kitchen. That awful woman, pressing him in on all sides with arms fattened by a brown leather coat and wanting to do the Hustle… As far as he could tell, that was it from the kitchen. Condiments? Yes, they were there, too, all the standards. Everyone had iced tea. Everyone had silverware, napkins (two per person, with a nearby stack to pluck from as needed), and everyone was ready to eat.

It was their last get-together before Shawn and Carlton left for a vacation back at the farm in Indiana. Another house-sitting chore. Another chance to look after horses and shoot cans off the rail fence without the neighbors complaining. There were no neighbors. There were chickens now, if Uncle Fenz, hawks or foxes hadn't helped themselves. Another chance for Shawn to smooth his feathers, for him to figure out if this was really his life. Carlton didn't need to think about it. This was his life.

"Succulents," Juliet said, ears having a long, long reach, beyond her imagination and her constant thoughts. She worked tirelessly on fitting pieces of one thought into another. Everything had a connection. She was formed of associations. This wasn't far from the way Gus thought, and it was closest of all to the way Shawn soaked in his distorted scope of the world. "What were you saying about succulents?"

"What the hell are succulents?" Carlton snapped open a napkin and laid it on his thigh. "Do I even want to know?"

"Plants," said Gus and Juliet together.

Carlton couldn't count how long they'd been married now, or how long they'd been together. Years. It takes years of togetherness to form such synchronicity. The only synchronicity he and Shawn had was the temptations unleashed behind the door of the bedroom far at the end of the hall. They liked to fight. They liked to be unpredictable. They liked to make amends and do it all over again.

"Brad is a succulent," Gus went on. "A xerophyte."

"It's Latin," Juliet picked up where Gus had left off. "Latin for _succus_. Juice. That's why their leaves are so chubby. You just want to squeeze them."

"Like a pimple," added Gus.

The two of them chortled at one another.

"And watch the _succus _ooze out."

"I'm eating, O'Hara. Can we talk about plant acne when I'm not shoving plant matter down my gullet?" Carlton stared at her. Pricks of humor marked his gaze and kept him from being sincere. "You have too much time on your hands. Speaking of time," he fake-cleared his throat, fingers wrapping at Shawn's wrist. "You made up your mind yet?"

Nearly hourly, Shawn was asked about this. It wasn't exactly hourly. But his internal clocks were wound too tight and too wrong, and he couldn't keep one moment straight from another. Shawn Spencer's internal clock was like those old pocket watches Uncle Fenz kept: cracked ceramic faces, all the hours there, the mechanisms could work if prodded and poked by one who knew what he was doing—but inevitably one hand was missing. Always the hour hand. The fragile, small hour hand.

Shawn's life was made up of minutes. The hours were absent.

"I thought Brad was some kind of grassy—grassy thing. It only looks like grass in that it's green and has—things." He splayed his fingers and jutted his hands out.

Carlton huffed. Shawn snapped the rule the way he snapped time. He'd ignored the question.

Juliet plied Shawn's malleable mouth to the syllables of _le mot du jour_. "Suc-cu-lent."

The table fell into a moment of silence. There was nibbling, swallowing, chewing, sipping.

Carlton knew when he shouldn't let a thing go. It's possible Shawn didn't know. Shawn might've forgotten he'd been asked.

"So you'll make up your mind about it later," Carlton stated. He knew when to state. He knew when to question, when to stay quiet, when to yell. That was their synchronicity. They read each other like sentences on a page. Fat and wordy sentences. Dickensian, Tolstoy, and not the shortness of breath found in poetry. "Only fifty hours—"

"More like fifty-four," Shawn put in. He forgot hours and held to minutes, but he could tell the days apart. "More than three thousand minutes. I have three thousand minutes to give you an answer."

Two spots of red on his cheeks showed Carlton's deep aggravation. The fork spiked into a chunk of grilled meat. Shawn would need more than two minutes to prepare a speech. Wouldn't he? Carlton's examination of Shawn was more internal, less superficial. The daylight in the dining room, the yellow hues reflecting off the painted walls, glinted on whiteness in Shawn's hair, the intermittent but ever-expanding company of grays. But they were not gray, they were white—violently white, as with the coming of shock and not the appearance of age. And wrinkles darkening, creating a contrast. Shawn would be a pain in the ass when he was eighty, ninety, a hundred. He was already a pain in the ass. But he could improvise anything. He was impromptu, confident. His conscience had long ago forgotten the pain of humiliation, the way it dragged on like some poisons. Carlton remembered the vitriolic sting of it against his tongue. His heart had been holed, filled and cured, first with calomel and now with Shawn. Shawn could cure with merciless vigor, a will to possess.

Shawn wouldn't need to plan his speech. He had all the time in the world. He could afford to squander minutes and consume hours as though each was made of sugar and stuffed with air.

Shawn shifted a baked bean around on his plate, leaving a trail of its bronze juice behind. "So, Brad's _not _a cactus?"

"He's a succulent!" cried Juliet and Gus, their unison perfected.

"Xerophyte," Carlton said a second later. He leaned over and kissed Shawn. "_Succus_."

He had all the time in the world. Since… since _ab aeterno_.


	2. Chapter 2

II.  
_Forward_

Carlton's desk was the epitome of the word 'tidy.' Everyone in the station knew it. It was pointed out to the rookies as a staple of what the chief expected of her detectives. "This is what your desk should look like," then she would leave the rookies hanging and sweating, "when you leave for the day. No one expects you to have your desk look as neat as Detective Lassiter's all the damn time. Lassiter is the only one who expects it from himself."

Damn right he did. Especially today. He'd been staying late since Monday, scraping his way through his Inbox, stacking up files in the Outbox, running through pens and pencils like a schoolboy just to finish up his work by Wednesday afternoon. Shawn and he were flying out to Indianapolis. He wanted to leave an empty desk behind, wanted to come back in two weeks to an empty desk ready to take on the challenges of heists and, unfortunately, murders.

A whole two weeks away. Those in the office were beginning to talk. Scuttlebutt ran rampant. Lassiter, gone two whole weeks! Some would be less afraid to come to work. Some were looking forward to a heavier workload that was sure to be theirs in Lassiter's absence. Others, in the darkest and shadowiest portions of the station, wondered where their resident psychic was, and why he hadn't been in since Saturday, and if it was true that Carlton kept a picture frame in his desk of him and Shawn together. They had fun with their presumptions, and Carlton never enlisted the aid of truth. He felt, at times, that his desk lay trapped in a box of steel, that there he worked and there he existed as a cop, and at home he was himself—each version whole, each version carrying its own weight and meaning and profoundness. The moment he felt the dichotomy shift was that which saw him at a certain streetlight at a certain part of Santa Barbara. It was there that he left the guise behind, took off his badge and left it in the next seat over, as if it rode along like a silent passenger: Carlton was driving now, not Detective Lassiter. He never felt this way when he left his desk.

His neat, tidy desk.

He couldn't wait for the hands of the clock above the coffee bar to reach an acceptable departure hour. Even the computer clock crept on. His watch's battery had worn itself out, worrying over the lost minutes of the last forty-eight hours. It lay stiff and dead on the picture frame in his desk, over the blue sky above his and Shawn's heads. He had his phone. He never looked at it for the time. He looked at it for Shawn's bitty text messages, those wordy tokens of love in a hundred and sixty characters or less. His phone lay in his coat pocket, next to his hip, near his gun.

"De—" A stall, as Buzz was subjected to Lassiter's look of—of what was it? Not quite contentment, but he was not his usual contemptuous self when a uniform bothered him in the middle of the day. "Detective Lassiter, where's Shawn been? I'd ask O'Hara, but she—" He swallowed, unable to say. Detective O'Hara had laughed and said he should ask Lassiter. He kept his usual sphere from Lassiter, not less than two feet, not more than five. Out of reach of long arms capable of hostilities and mumbled invectives. "We haven't seen him lately. That's all. He sick again? I know the weather's been awful."

Lassiter hadn't grown used to this yet. He'd been with Shawn—Shawn—how many weeks now? But it wasn't weeks any more. It had progressed into months. Soon, he'd be counting by years. Then came decades and anniversaries and old age, infirmary, death, the triumph of love at the end of it all. It made his hands tremble, thinking of what it would be like if Shawn turned to an image ghostly and unnatural, intangible, improbable.

What was Buzz's question?

Oh, right, that—that one.

Carlton answered politely. And if he was polite it generally meant that he was truthful.

"He's giving a speech to the Citizens Police Academy this afternoon. It's the last class. They're graduating today, and they kept wanting to talk to Shawn, so—"

So there it was. McNab smiled, nodding his thanks.

"Did Shawn ever go to that class himself?"

Buzz wished he hadn't asked, but there was a subtlety in Lassiter, something human that Buzz had spent years searching for. It led them two of them to collogue. Shawn was a subject one could converse about easily. He was the unifier. Like food and shelter, one could always talk about him because he rotated importantly through their lives. He was common ground.

"He doesn't need to," said Carlton, setting up his pencils in a row. Then, abruptly, he scattered the pile and endeavored to leave them like that. He didn't need to be OCD about his pencils now that someone had removed the cold pipe from the hot crevice of his ass. "But Sergeant Reyes thinks it's interesting to hold a Q and A with Shawn on their last day. Shawn is more like them than he is like me or you; he's not a cop, but he's worked with us so long that he knows more of what goes on here than," he paused, straightened his tie, raised his eyebrows when looking at McNab, "than he probably should or wants to, really. His dad was a cop. His best friend is married to one. He lives with one."

"Yeah, I see what you mean. Shawn would do well in that class. Have fun on your trip." McNab wanted to get away. That was the most he'd heard Lassiter say in five years that wasn't attached to a shift meeting or a manhunt briefing. At least he'd stopped himself from saying _You and Shawn have fun on your trip_. There was no proof that Shawn was going. Just the hint of it. Lassiter never would go anywhere without Shawn. And Lassiter had become more human—that word again, as if he'd been a statue before—more _personal, _then, since he'd swallowed the light Shawn emanated. Auras. Psychics called them auras.

Lassiter checked his phone. The time was unimportant.

He set it back down again, slightly dismayed. No message from Shawn.

But it was one-thirty. He was probably already at the substation, probably already mingling and blending and winning the hearts of everyone there.

A Question and Answer sessions with Santa Barbara Police Department psychic, solver of numerous crimes and a few cold cases. It would be a treat for the students.

Carlton caught his knee shaking up and down. He stopped it. He wished his nerves would recede. He could hear Shawn's voice in the back of his head. "It's a new moon day." Shawn liked to blame moods on the moon. Carlton tried to pass it off as mumbo-jumbo. But Shawn had an answer for him, as he had an answer, eventually, for everything. "You can see the light of the moon, the twist of the stars in the sky, you can feel the wind and the sun's warmth. You live in Santa Barbara. The ocean's _right there_." He flung his hand at the door, indicating the sea then at neap tide. "If you can see the pull of the moon on the water, on something that enormous, you can call it mumbo-jumbo or gobbledygook or whatever." Lassiter knew he was right. So the moon didn't have any power, huh? Yet how often had he relied on his instincts to lead him in a case? And he couldn't see his instincts, but he could see the ocean succumb to the whims of Earth's satellite.

It was a new moon day, according to the app on his phone. Energy and aggression would be easy. Starting fresh projects. Going on vacation…

Carlton rather wished he could go to the substation and see Shawn perform his regalities as questions were flung at him, as answers wound out of his mouth and hypnotized his audience. Shawn was part magician: he played tricks. He was part god, because Carlton didn't know yet how Shawn got the strength or acumen to execute those tricks. It had to be a blessing from a higher being, from the consciousness of a star, from the slyness of the moon.

Carlton zipped a text off to Shawn. He didn't get an answer back. But, by the time he remembered that Shawn hadn't texted him yet, he was down to the last three cases in the Inbox.

He pushed paper, pencil, keys on the keyboard—and he tried to push around the hours of the day.

One thing was true: Vacations refused to be rushed into.


	3. Chapter 3

III.  
_Back_

On Monday, Shawn started packing. Oftentimes, this was left until the last possible minute. He preferred to do anything but see the awesome blackness of an empty suitcase, to shift through the wares of his wardrobe for the proper things to take, to fold, stack, unfold, refold, stack a second, third, fourth time. If he had had his way, he would've packed for the trip the way he'd packed when he'd moved in: throwing objects together in one giant Hefty Cinch sack. He heard that airlines frowned on garbage bags being used as suitcases. One could only guess _why_.

Oh so reluctantly, he dragged from the closet in the Nautical Bedroom (the spare room, where Shawn used to crash before his world and Lassiter's snapped into place) the small and conspicuously floral suitcase his mother had given for Christmas. She thought he would get a kick out of the vintage 1980s floral pattern, with salmon and sea foam green and shreds of ivory ribbons.

He did like it. It was too ridiculous that he had to laugh at it. Not the reading material strewn about the house, or anything ever done to Carlton made Shawn feel gayer than that obnoxiously printed suitcase. Maddie had thought it a kind of tongue-and-cheek joke, combining Shawn's love for the 80s with Shawn's love for men. It didn't matter that she didn't get it, that it wasn't men in the plural, just one. He supposed it was an attribute of humanness, a kind of annoying habit they had to label everything. They were all living their life in a pantry, and must be labeled to be identified, with ingredients and a title, where they were manufactured and by whom, the date they were canned and the date they expired.

He heaved the suitcase to the bed. The room hadn't changed much since Juliet's initial reconstruction, with its fair green walls like frosted celery, the furniture mostly Carlton's but two things that were Shawn's taken from the old family homestead as gifts from Uncle Fenz. And the quilt on the bed, not really a "gift" from Henry, but more like, "Here, found this, thought you could use it." Henry never asked where they'd put it. The furthest he even walked down the main hall of the tiny house was the bathroom. He'd helped Shawn and Carlton do the tile, despite vociferous protests that he wouldn't lift a finger. Even Henry couldn't resist the award of Masculinity Points as he cut and set tile. They'd listened to classic rock, drank beers, at pizza—watched a baseball game after they were done, with one of them dribbling off to the bathroom again just to have a look at the handiwork and accomplishment. But Henry never tiptoed past the bathroom.

Shawn wished his dad was there to help him pack. Any time they went somewhere when he was a kid, Henry had to repack for Shawn. And he had to check the car's bags of snacks for anything that'd made it past initial customs, like candy cigarettes and umpteen packages of Big League Chew. Some were cleverly smuggled in as highly-prized contraband, and hidden around the vehicle, between cushions and under the seats, with ropes of red licorice and boxes of Mike and Ike. "Great Scott!" Shawn had once heard his dad exclaim to Maddie, who stood nearby, wanting to chide Shawn and far too amused to do so. "It's like we're riding in the god damn Good Humor truck." Sugar smelled a whole lot nicer than car, which always wound up smelling like Henry's feet with an undercurrent of Maddie's conditioner.

Shawn tossed bundles of uninteresting white cotton socks into the suitcase. Why couldn't he and Carlton _drive _to Indiana? It sounded much more romantic than a prosaic plane ride. Sure, it would take days, and a plane ride would be over in a matter of hours. But in a car, they could stop at weird roadside attractions, or maybe head way up north and go by Mt. Rushmore. Although, they were already planning to take a few days and roam around Ohio. Carlton wanted to see Civil War things, presidential things. Carlton had a tendency to drone on about the Civil War, and Shawn couldn't have cared less—until a letter from Uncle Fenz suggested that almost every male in their family alive at the time had been in that war. It mutated Shawn's interest. Carlton became obsessed with finding a connection between his relatives and Shawn's, and so far had only been able to produce the fact that Shawn's great-times-four grandfather and Carlton's great-times-three grandfather had marched with Sherman to the sea. So had thousands of other men.

Just then, and rather appropriately, Shawn shuffled aside a stack of three Civil War books then of interest to Carlton. He reached the Indiana and Ohio guidebooks beneath. They went in with the socks and underwear and t-shirts.

In the distance, the screen door slammed and a voice split the silence.

"Shawn, you here?"

Maybe Henry wanted to help him pack after all.

"I'll be out in a second, Dad." Because he knew full well that once his father knew that he was in the bedroom, they would not be able to talk. Dad wouldn't come down. No way. No how.

His head snapped up at a flash of blue in the doorway. Henry's typical loud shirts, worn on his off days, far more outlandish than his subdued work attire. The shirt was so blue that he clashed terribly with the room, making it seem more like a spa retreat, suggesting one should whisper.

Henry smirked a little. "Any Blow Pops or candy cigarettes in there?" He nodded at the suitcase. God, that thing was homely. But recognizable. Maddie had always understood Shawn's uniqueness of spirit better, able to support the flames rather than change their course the way he'd tried to do.

"I'm fresh out." Shawn pounced on the opportunity before it vanished. He wished his dad's shirt would vanish, too. "So, this is where we sleep. Juliet designed this room. You can see the quilt you gave—from you—it's under here somewhere." The bed was covered in disregarded shirts, underwear of uncertain cleanliness and socks likewise, books and magazines and no less than five of Shawn's favorite sunglasses.

Henry wasn't there to discuss decor. True, he'd never seen the bedroom and hadn't cared to. Shawn showed zilch interest in his dad's bedroom decor. Seemed tit-for-tat. "I heard from Sergeant Reyes that you're going to do something with the Citizens Police Academy?"

"You heard correctly. You want some tea? I want some tea."

He really wanted to get out of the bedroom. It was awkward. It was cramped. Never a big room, it barely fit Shawn and Carlton, and the two of them never seemed to roam around it at the same time of morning or night. It was certainly much smaller with Dad hanging out in the doorway like Shelob defending her lair.

Henry stalked Shawn five steps down the hall, turned left into the kitchen. "Why are you doing that? You never cared about it the last seven years, since it's been around."

"They asked me," Shawn replied stonily. From the cupboard, he retrieved sizable glasses, from the refrigerator came the pitcher of iced tea he'd made yesterday, recipe from Lady Olga. "Everyone in the police department realizes that I am something—somebody. That I've achieved a level of success. You're the only one who doesn't see it. You don't always see a lot of things."

"Hey, just because I don't acknowledge it doesn't mean I don't see it and that I don't know it's there!"

Shawn shoved a glass toward his dad. As far as he was concerned, their singular topic had bled into others. It had been this way with them lately. Their conversations spread out like invasive vines. Shawn went to the patio, sun drenched and salty smelling. The chair was warm, the sun just having left it. Henry sat in one of the others, still in the sun. It shone off his balding head.

"I took part in this new class," Henry admitted. He twirled the glass around on the chair's arm. It left behind a wet, dark ring of condensation. "Went in and talked to them about hostage situations. They're only there for the gore of it all."

"Not all of them. And so what if they are? So they all didn't become cops. You can't hold that against everyone."

They were doing it again. The dance of equivocations. Tchaikovsky's nightmare.

Shawn rubbed his brow. The way Lassie used to get headaches over him, Shawn got them now over his father. There was still too much sorrow, too much grief and mystery, too much was smeared. He couldn't even find his father's eyes to look at them now. "They just want to do a Question and Answer panel. I suppose if I were them I'd have a lot of questions about me, too."

"How are you going to pass this off?"

"Pass what off?"

"Being a psychic."

"I've been doing it this long." He didn't say the years. He'd forgotten to count them and they were still scattered. They hung as an odd collection of images and remembrances, like picture frames with the collywobbles. "It's just a lot of mumbo-jumbo about the moon," he borrowed it from Lassie, "about my feelings and the way I see things."

That was a double entendre he could hold to. He _saw _things. Henry had taught him how, and now it was second-nature, involuntary, and he couldn't wean himself free. He _saw _things, too. Like what he and Jules had talked about once, that they set their thoughts out in circles and fitted the unfinished rings together until they were whole. Their thoughts created woven tapestries. Other people tended to embroider: a piece there, a figure there. But they wove blankets. Their minds were covered with them. Rarely was he allowed the lay the shuttle aside, abandon the loom.

Shawn raised his eyes. "What are they like? The people in the class. Other than your usual belief that they're all just wannabe cops."

"I don't mean that," Henry said, pained, "not exactly. For some reason or another, when a kid wants to be a cop, something might stop him from doing it when he's a grownup. Not all of them changed their life-path by a few bad choices."

"And revenge," said Shawn. "Don't forget the revenge part, Dad. It's my favorite."

Henry growled—but it was fair. He had been hard on Shawn, but those choices in the past were still Shawn's, and those consequences were still Shawn's. "Not the least of which is the physical test—and the polygraph. It's hard to find anyone these days that can get through that thing without admitting to some youthful stupidity."

Shawn recalled the smoothness of freedom tasted when he knew he barred forever from legitimate law enforcement. It was harsh at first, struck him with fists of realization. He had wrecked his father's dream for him, and had lain a sloppy path to his own destiny. It hadn't landed him far from where he'd begun.

"Anyway," Shawn straightened in the chair, "the talk's on Wednesday, and then Lassie and I are heading to Indiana."

"When's your flight?"

"Five-thirty. It'll be late when we get there. I mean to Uncle Fenz's."

"Flying into Indianapolis or Cincinnati?"

"Indianapolis. We're renting a car and driving down to the farm. Uncle Fenz is leaving Wednesday morning. At least the cats and horses will be happy to see us."

"And where's Uncle Fenz's fishing reel taking him this time?"

"Florida. Mom might stop by, too. If she can get away." Shawn had been saving this bit for a time when he could dish it and watch it savoringly. Henry didn't tease him about Carlton. Dad wouldn't. He couldn't without stammering and blushing and wanting to run and hide. But Shawn could tease Dad about Mom.

"Well, have fun. And don't pack a suitcase full of candy, Shawn, like you did that one time we went out to Utah."

"I wasn't even thinking of doing that! And I was eight! And you'd, like, told me I couldn't have any candy that summer until I read all of the World Book Encyclopedia! Lucky for me, they have candy in Indiana. I assume there's no anti-sugar law in Ohio yet, either. They're dumb with their laws."

"Like California's so much better."

Shawn smirked, his snicker silent, his humor appreciative. Words that had been meaningless to Henry before, like Prop 8 and DOMA, were now etched in his personal dictionary.

"What's in Ohio?"

Mouth pushed together tightly, Shawn didn't want to say since he was sure he couldn't say it without sounding grumpy. But he'd promised he'd go and be serious about it. Before he could form words, Henry was shrugging it away.

"Never mind, I don't need to know. Just—be careful." The tap he gave Shawn's cheek was affectionate. "Always be careful."

"Are you talking about being careful on the trip, or being careful with what I say to a room full of curious cop wannabes?"

Henry used both hands to hold Shawn's face, tugged warmly at his earlobes like he used to do when Shawn was a baby. "Both. Deep down inside, Shawn," he turned to walk across the lawn, "people are mean sons of bitches."

"Thanks for that heartwarming humanity lesson. Just for that, I'm packing a whole bag of Blow Pops!"

How unusual for Dad to let him have the last word, unless the blurt of the truck's horn counted as a retort.

Shawn went back to the bedroom. The mess had stayed. In California, there were no fairies of the woods to come and help the lazy stuff suitcases to bursting.

"Crap," mumbled Shawn.

Mostly, he just wanted to stretch out on the bed and take a nap. He hadn't had a case in ages, hadn't even wanted one and no one had needed him. He'd composed a few astrological essays, had sent them off to blogs and magazines and e-zines for publication. Circumstance and personnel fiascos had left his job at the golf course hanging in uncertainty. But he hadn't really worked in two weeks. The less intellectual stimuli he had, the more listless his body became.

He resisted the bed and wove back to the kitchen. On the refrigerator, among his magnets of the Swedish alphabet, the back of a grocery receipt with a list penned on it. Shawn added "Blow Pops" below the necessities of Barbasol and Colgate.

Without thinking, he took up one of Lassie's Civil War books, sat on the patio with his tea, and read while he waited for inspiration to strike, perhaps with all the power of a fifteen-inch Rodman gun.


	4. Chapter 4

IV.  
_Forward_

All that Carlton hoped for that afternoon was that no one got himself killed in a way that inveigled the help SBPD's lead detective. If he knew hexes and curses to keep away the adverse possibilities, he would've performed them. But under a new moon, he supposed one never really knew, and hexes might be powerless.

Juliet stood in front of Lassiter's exceptionally tidy desk. It was a wonderland of OCDs. Even more than usual. She suspected Carlton was feeling itchy, ready to get out of there as soon as his signature was on the last bit of the day's paperwork. She had a thorough understanding of this, and a grand appreciation for it as well. After the conniving and manipulating, the lying and—okay, the _giggling—_it took to get Carlton and Shawn to listen to one another, she felt that a little wallow in pride was acceptable. Juliet, on occasion, enjoyed bragging, and she'd told Gus one night more than a year ago that Shawn and Carlton belonged together. Gus said they belonged together only in the way the opposite poles of Earth did. They functioned together—a unit—but bringing the two from their respective points would lead to the end of everything. So far, all it had carried to an end was Lassiter's overall glumness, his inability to leave the station for sixteen hours. And it wasn't as though the city government was willing to pass along that much overtime. Carlton often _volunteered_. Now he didn't have to.

"Did you hear about the brawl at the hockey game last night?"

Speaking of new moons. "I saw it in the paper." His reply was crisp and short and, he hoped, dismissive. She wasn't leaving. Why wasn't she leaving? "Look, O'Hara, I'm not all that great at talking sports. I think that's why you married the man you did, because I lack the interest and knowhow talking sports with you. Now, if you have something to say regarding a particularly interesting cold case, or if you've come to—"

"Just breaking the ice, Carlton." She frowned. "No pun intended. But Shawn always says that new moons are—"

"As bad as full ones. Yes, I know." He grumbled, bent over paperwork, "I live with him, of course I know. Somewhere between laundry and dinner preparations, there's always chatter about moons. Not sure who I wound up with, Shawn Spencer or John Dee."

Should she even ask? Oh, why not! It was a tedious afternoon. "Who's John Dee?"

"Court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth the First."

"Why do you even know that?"

"Shawn wrote a piece on him. I'm his guinea pig. He makes me read everything for typos and coherency."

"I'm sorry about that," Juliet said, meaning it.

"Don't be. I assure you, O'Hara, that I am properly recompensed."

Juliet thumbed through a binder, kind of small for a case binder, full of every piece of information about an old hit-and-skip she'd been trying to crack, "in her spare time." Spare time was as unreal to a cop as a unicorn was to a knight. "I wondered if you'd heard from Shawn yet. About the SBPD CPA thing."

"That's too many letters."

Juliet held her breath. When Carlton came back from his vacation, he would be in a more sporting mood—which lasted upwards of a week. "You haven't heard anything? Damn. I wanted to know how it went."

Lassiter's eyes narrowed involuntarily, searchingly. "Why?"

"I like Shawn's speeches," she said, grinning. "I wish I could've gone."

"Gone?" A painful thorn edged its way into Carlton's thoughts. "Won't they still be there?" The clock on the far wall had its small hand at two, the other at seven.

"Oh, don't look at that one," Juliet said, waving a hand at the wall clock. "It's been dying for days but no one's bothered to take it down. It's after three."

Carlton's mobile told him it was 3:06. How long was that class supposed to be? Two hours would've been enough time, surely, for all those students to ask Shawn Spencer what they wanted, and certainly enough time for Shawn to get through his answers.

"Shawn should be home by now," Carlton said. "I'd better get home myself if we're going to make our flight."

"Yeah, have fun with security. And don't pack a gun. Really, Carlton, remember the last time—"

But he'd put the phone to his ear, and Juliet was forced to swallow the remainder of the story. Twenty seconds later, Carlton looked at her, the phone landing in his jacket pocket.

"He's not answering."

Juliet sensed a volcanic eruption. She splayed a hand, imparting gentleness and sensitivity. "Now, Carlton, don't read too much into it."

"He always answers. He's attached to his phone. It's his second mouth and third ear."

"Maybe he's," she groped for a risible but practical excuse, "in the shower."

Carlton redialed Shawn's phone. That worsened matters. "Straight to voicemail. I'm calling the house." He dialed, and it rang until his own recorded message flipped to life in his ear. Carlton's heartbeat increased, and he let a strangeness come over him. "Call Guster, find out if he's seen or heard from Shawn. I'm going to find Sergeant Reyes."

Sergeant Reyes had always considered Detective Lassiter competent though excessively over-protective. Of their civilian employee Shawn Spencer, if someone so much as looked at him the wrong way, Lassiter's natural aggression soared. Reyes was seated at his desk, eating a jelly donut (raspberry), his first of the day, and enjoying a nice, strong cup of black single-source coffee, his third of the day. Reyes had been sidelined from regular patrol following an injury, the injury requiring surgery, and so he had taken over instructing the CPA—a one-time-only thing, as far as he was concerned. He didn't appreciate cops like Lassiter breathing down his neck.

"Shawn was fine when I saw him at the substation," Reyes said. He laid aside jelly donut and coffee, giving the detective every ounce of his available attention. "He gave them a pretty good session. So good that I think I'll write up in my notes that he should come around for the next CPA in the summer. If he wants, I mean."

"But you didn't see him leave?"

"Leave—the building?" Reyes sat back, blocky shoulders slumping, eyes turning vacant as he scanned the recent past. "There were so many people—some of the students brought their families—but I stayed till everyone had gone, except Officer Valencia, but her office is there. Why don't you call her out at the substation and see if he's around?"

Juliet was still on the phone with Gus when Lassiter's voice boomed through the whole detectives' section. "O'HARA!"

"Gotta go," she whispered into the phone like a reprimanded child. Carlton was pale—paler than usual. What was it now?

"I'm going over to the substation to find out what's going on. In the meantime, check the house."

"I'm not really going to do—"

"Check the house."

"The last time you sent a whole team into your house, Shawn was taking a bath, and we could've used one after we all got egg on our faces!"

His expression was fierce, influential, and Juliet gave in, one condition unbreakable.

"I'll take McNab and we'll go, but I'm not taking a whole team!" She marched off in a storm of feminine energy, as much as she could in a pencil-thin knee-length skirt and sensible brown pumps.

Carlton let her think he was overreacting. It was not up to him how far his emotions over-reached when it came to Shawn. He grabbed the first uniformed newbie who wasn't doing a good enough job looking occupied.

"What's your name?"

"Calloway, sir."

"Well, Calloway, been out to the substation yet?"

"A few times, sir, but never as a cop. I took the Citizens Police Academy class about five years ago."

_Wannabes_, Carlton growled in his head as he slammed down the gas pedal.


	5. Chapter 5

V.  
_Back_

Only in the last few months had Shawn begun to feel oddly self-conscious of his appearance. It was more than the whisper of gray in his hair. He was used to that, and had, in a way, looked forward to growing into a sly silver fox, debonair and distinguished and elegant. But what he hadn't anticipated was the change of attitude regarding his body, particularly when it came to clothing it. After last year's holidays, which were glum and unexpectedly blah for reasons he couldn't explain—except that his dad had gone away, and Juliet and Gus likewise—Shawn had received the usual barrage of screen-print tees and those button-up shirts Lassie referred to as "sloppies." What the word "sloppy" referred to, Shawn could only guess: those shirts that he wore over his screen-print tees on chillier Santa Barbara days. These were usually colored, cotton, or a poly-cotton blend, buttons on the front, and he never tucked them in and never ironed them.

And like it'd happened in a movie, Shawn walked into the bathroom one evening to comb his hair before heading to the Tanglevine Club, and something switched on his brain as he caught himself in the mirror, in a screen-print tee with a faded Star Wars logo, and one of his plaid sloppies above blue jeans just faded enough to fit with the latest denim trend. He thought he looked like somebody else, like someone old who'd forgotten he wasn't twenty-one anymore.

For a while, he and this mesmeric insight into his outer persona did not clash again.

Not, that is, until he stood in front of the icons of his wardrobe, disturbed by his lacking interest. He did not know what to wear now, and was rather sure that holding a Q & A with the CPA couldn't be done nearly so well if he stood there in his boxers and socks. Clothes were a must. A tee and a sloppy was a must-not. He didn't know why. Just remembering that image of him in the bathroom mirror that day was enough to tell him again, "This, Shawn, is a _Must Not_." He could wear them at weekends, when he was alone with Lassie or his friends; he could wear them at the farm and to travel in, but he couldn't wear them to make a public appearance. He'd grown too old for them now, and the look was too young.

All that talk he and Gus used to spew, too, of being only as young as you _felt_. But Gus didn't wear sloppies and, as far as Shawn understood, would never admit to owning one of Target's best screen-print tees.

He rummaged through hangers, through pleats and cuffs and collars to reach the goods at the back of the closet. He was still there, trapped and unaware and tripping over shoes when he heard the screen door open and close.

"Shawn? You here?"

It must be after twelve. Gus often came for lunch if Jules was too busy. It's not as though the house was out of the way.

Shawn's arms flailed as he tried to find his way out of sleeves and fabric. It kept rolling over him like waves. He spun, ankles bending, shoes digging into his sensitive soles—and he finally succumbed to the influence of gravity.

The door opened at the end that held Shawn trapped. Gus looked down upon him, both literally and in the method of disapproval.

"What _are _you doing?"

"Looking for a clean shirt to wear."

"Today's your day with the CPA." Gus held open his hand: Shawn smacked his into it. Clothes hung off Shawn that Gus helped remove, including one of Lassiter's shirts and tie. Gus maneuvered the shirt and tie together. "This doesn't look half bad."

Shawn did not like the colors, a light blue shirt and a pale orange tie. "Ugh, Gus, no, don't make me."

That cinched it. Gus shoved the shirt to Shawn. "Put it on. I'll tie the tie for you." He proceeded to produce a flawless double-Windsor. "What time are you supposed to be there?"

"One or something." He couldn't really remember what he was told. "Thank God for phone apps. My featherbrained brain can get some rest." The phone screen told him the meeting started at one. "Yeah, one."

"Put the phone down and get that shirt on."

Shawn had one sleeve on, and that was as far as he'd gotten. "This is Lassie's shirt. He's going to kill me. I got it for him for Christmas."

"You big romantic, you. He won't notice. Sometimes I think I could wear Juliet's stockings and she wouldn't notice."

"Please tell me that's just a _theory_."

"A hundred percent. Now pull that tight."

"I know how to put on a tie."

"Why are you so uptight, anyway? Don't want to do any Q & A?"

"My dad was here, blessing me with his opinions!" His hand gesture suggested a king's lackadaisical and morally superior wave to cheering myrmidons.

"He has opinions on the CPA? That's interesting. And by that I mean it's a big waste of time."

"H'mm, true. He said he did a little with it this time around. Gave me some good advice."

"I'm almost a little too afraid to ask what that advice was. Are you really taking this?" Gus held up an Ohio guidebook, found under a shirt lying out of the ugly floral suitcase.

"I have to." Shawn adjusted the tie and flattened the collar. He might not look as suave in blue as Lassie, but he felt more like a grownup than a kid lost out of high school. "I promised I would go, and we're going."

"It's the middle of February. He knows it _snows _there, doesn't he?"

"Honestly, I think he's looking forward to snow. Unfortunately."

"Bring your long underwear."

"I don't have any. At this point, I'm lucky I remember to put on regular underwear."

"I hear that. I forgot to brush my teeth before I left the house this morning."

"That's not likely a sign that you're getting old and feeble, Gus."

"Not old _and _feeble, just old."

Gus continued to fold into neat piles the clothes that'd fallen off hangers in the closet. It was amazing that two men could have a closet not stuffed to the point of exploding. Shawn was a radical when it came to possessions: he was picky about what he kept. Lassiter wore his shirts and suits two years—he wrote their purchase dates on tags or on the lining—then gave them away and bought fresh ones. Most of Shawn's clothes were far older than Lassiter's, and Lassiter's were superior. Who'd have thought? Shawn's mind wasn't equipped to handle fashion sense. He came across a t-shirt of Shawn's recognized from the brief span of their teenage years. He sighed.

"It made me feel pretty old, anyway. What else did your dad want?"

"Oh, nothing, really. Just imparting his regal wisdom," again the flippant, airy hand gesture, "and went on his way. He did do one strange thing, though."

"I cannot wait to hear this."

"He came to the bedroom doorway."

Gus took a slow seat on the bed's end. His palm flattened to his chest, faking a racing heart and a swooning head.

"He's never been back here before. Between you and me and this tie," he flipped the tie, so brightly and gaudy that it should have its own municipal government, "I think he came over here just to make sure Lassie hadn't repainted to walls Endfield Rifle Gray or Union Blue."

Gus held up one of Lassiter's Jeff Shaara books. "You need to stop reading these."

"But I have learned a thing or two."

"Like what?"

"Stonewall Jackson once did his own astrological chart."

"Really?" Gus couldn't help but be intrigued.

"He was a weirdo. I have some notes, think I might write my next essay about him."

"Well, get your boots on, soldier. We'll get some food, then I'll drop you off at the substation." Gus glanced at his watch. "Double-quick, too."

"As long as you come back to pick me up."

"I'll call you if I can't."

"Maybe someone can give me a ride home."

"You're bound to make a friend or two. You always do."


	6. Chapter 6

VI.  
_Forward_

Shawn moved planets around in his mind. The key to this was visualization. Visualizing implied endeavor, and endeavor meant that he could do something, that he was not trapped in this world of limited breath.

He liked to move around the planets. They were colder than stars, wily and unexplored. He could stare at Io from the stormy surface of Jupiter, and he could peel away the gases of Venus from the red haven of Mars.

He could do anything as long as he moved the planets.

He'd run out of other methods of preserving sanity. He'd run through the history of this CPA meeting. For the first time in centuries, a son wished he'd listened to his father. Dad was right. At heart, people could be mean sons of bitches.

In this case, it was only one.

"You're bound to make a friend or two," Gus had said. It was usually true. Shawn could be the stranger at a party, and leave hours later having inadvertently convinced everyone that he'd been the host.

The meeting and his Q & A had started well enough. He'd been right, at least, in supposing those fifteen graduates had heard of him, considered him a professional. To them, he was a psychic detective—and who was he to tell them he wasn't? It depended on one's own definition of psychic. What he did and what he executed during a case could be seen as supernatural. It certainly wasn't _normal_.

The majority of his life had not been quantifiably _Normal_. Small and stringy memories, lost in Venus' gases and Pluto's darkness, when he'd been very young, when he didn't talk so much and dreamed more, that, he thought, was the most mundane point of his life.

Those early days of his life had been rather ideal, spending time on the ocean in a boat, running around the backyard digging holes for no reason (before Dad decided that little boys digging holes was an aberration, something terriers do), and other instances of his childhood that he remembered but didn't necessarily relish.

He remembered more fondly the summers after he'd started school, the times he was shipped off to relatives in Indiana for two weeks, and there he'd been emboldened by the lack of parental instruction and run off into the woods, visited the neighbors' pigs and cows—

_A heifer. Io had been turned into a heifer by Zeus. To save her from Hera's jealousy._

Io understood what it was like to live in two worlds.

Shawn's hand groped around in front of him. He'd lost it the second it moved an inch from his face. Pluto's darkness now would be welcome compared to the deep and disgusting blackness veiling him now.

He felt what he'd felt a minute ago: cold, solid, smooth concrete.

But there was a smell, too. Like oil. Like old engines that had run too hot, too rich, too long.

And a trace of another scent less pronounced, more homey.

A smell like a horse.

A smell, too, that emanated from the drip he'd not heard for a while now, that smell of rain on limestone or brick. He'd mistaken it, at first, for being the odor of the shoreline on a wet day. But there was no imitating that smell. It occurred only at the shoreline, and somehow he knew he was still too far from the ocean, and the clouds had been nonexistent when he'd entered the substation hours ago.

Unknown hours.

Now Shawn wished he'd counted minutes into hours, hours into days. He'd be a long time lying there with nothing to do but move the planets around, and figure out how wet limestone existed that far underground.


	7. Chapter 7

VII._  
Back_

The back door to the chateau on Sunberry Street was locked. This relieved Juliet's tension.

"It's locked," she announced quietly to McNab.

"Well, that's good, right?"

He watched her whip out a key ring and got dazzled by the reflecting sunlight off shiny nickel. She found the appropriate key—it made sense to him that she should have a key to Shawn and Lassiter's place—but had a hard time getting the sticking door pushed inward. Buzz put his shoulder to use.

"So much for a quiet entrance," he said, partly apologetic for the loud scrape of the door's weather-stripping against linoleum. "Police!" He tried to sound loud and manly about it, hand hovering over the still-holstered weapon. "Hello, SBPD! Anyone here?"

The first thing Buzz noticed was the strange smell. Their guns came out, and he nodded at the detective. She went in first, checked the laundry room, the dining room, and gave the clear. Buzz went in after her, and wanted to check the bathroom first. He caught what the smell was: new paint. He couldn't help but notice the color on the walls. He felt like he'd stepped into a different house, one where Mr. Rogers might live, not austere Detective Lassiter. It looked like a house Roald Dahl had built.

The bathroom door was partially closed. Buzz, lowered to minimize his height, used his toe to inch the door in. No one was by the toilet, in front of the sink and mirror—and no one was in the shower.

Juliet appeared in the doorway, shrugging. "No one's home. I told Carlton that Shawn wouldn't be here."

Buzz wouldn't tell her what to do; she out-ranked him. If he'd been the superior officer, he'd be on the phone with Detective Lassiter already, telling him what they'd found—or hadn't found, in this case. An empty house.

"I'll call Carlton," Juliet announced.

Buzz nodded. See, he could do a thing or two right, so why was he still on patrol? He stepped down the hall, looking just in case O'Hara had missed something. That wasn't likely, but it seemed like a good idea, if not exactly procedural. At bedroom's threshold, Buzz stared and struggled with his thoughts. It was as if he'd suddenly noticed that he'd forgotten an important appointment.

"Detective," he called.

"Carlton's not answering." Juliet didn't see what he saw in the bedroom. There was not much to see. The furniture she knew by heart, though the closet doors were unusually ajar. The room lacked its common neatness, but that was to be expected. Except that—except that—

"I thought you said they were going on a trip tonight," Buzz said.

Now Juliet saw what he'd seen.

"Where's the luggage? Did you see it when we came in?"

Once more, Juliet gaped at him and shrugged. "Maybe Shawn's been here—and left again?"

"I guess that's possible, but—" His conjecture broke off when Detective O'Hara disappeared into the kitchen. He found her there with a fingertip stuck in a plant. It was hardly the time to be checking if the houseplants needed watering.

"You know what this is?"

"It's a succulent," Buzz answered.

"It's Shawn's pride and joy. He would've watered it before they left the house. It's been watered, so that means Shawn doesn't plan to come back."

Buzz didn't quite catch on to why this was profound. "But it is a succulent, right?"


	8. Chapter 8

VIII.  
_Forward_

The substation was in the old Post Office in that part of Santa Barbara that Lassiter referred to as "the watery side." It was near the beaches, not quite downtown, but more industrial, full of ancient warehouses weather-beaten and badly repaired. The only thing in that part of Santa Barbara that Lassiter knew was the Tanglevine Club. It was three blocks to the northeast.

Lassiter sat in the unmarked car, a forefinger going back and forth under his bottom lip. He moved things around in his mind. He was fitting a puzzle together. Those illusive circles and rings that Shawn had once talked about. Shawn was as much a magician as he was a psychic, sometimes more of one than the other. Only Shawn could join those solid rings together and knead from the crowds oohs and ahs.

"Maybe if we go inside again. There was your luggage inside—yours and Shawn's."

Carlton had nearly forgotten that Calloway was there. The rookie's wide face and once-broken nose were rather shocking to see across the car. He was used to O'Hara, and in lieu of her, he was used to Shawn. Carlton's eyes returned to the building's brick and cement facade. The two stories of 1920's architecture gave it an allure, but all the windows in the front were black, lightless inside and behind doors unlocked.

"Shawn must've gotten a ride from Gus, and brought the luggage with him. He probably thought I'd pick him up when he was done, that we'd go to the airport from here. He wouldn't have just left it." Carlton pushed away that cold, sinking feeling in his stomach. "We don't go inside until backup arrives."

"Right," Calloway nodded, slithering into the seat and loosing a tense breath. "Just for the record, Detective, I don't like this any more than you do."

Carlton wasn't listening. The finger kept moving under his lip, and every once in a while his eyes had to be moistened with a blink.

The moon lifted to importance in his mind. He wanted to hold the new black satellite in his hands and crush her. She created too much, spun too many tales. If it hadn't been for her, he and Shawn would be at the airport, taking their molestation by blue-gloved agents, like real men, and planning their misadventures in a wintertime world as they waited for aircraft boarding to begin.

Instead, Carlton was sitting in a car, and the only thing he couldn't wait to begin was a second search of the premises in question. "Should've brought one of the dogs out here," he grumbled.

Calloway stayed silent and still. He had heard plenty about Detective Lassiter's reputation, though less about Detective Lassiter's relationship with SBPD psychic Shawn Spencer. Calloway practiced a "Don't Ask, But Remain Open-Minded" mantra, in case Lassiter wanted to talk about it. In Academy, Calloway had learned that what people say to each other in the squad car tended to stay in the squad car. It was a slightly smellier and very less fun version of Vegas.

"If there's anything you want to talk about—" Calloway snatched at his own words. What was he doing? "Sorry. I'm not all that great with silence."

"Shawn's supposed to be in that building," Lassiter said. How long had he been with Shawn? By now, the time was massed into months. Since September. Autumn and winter always did seem to zip right by. Since September: six months. He was reaching the point where he no longer cared who guessed, who presumed, who knew. "He was doing a Q & A with the SBPD CPA, and we're supposed to be—" he looked at the clock on the squad's computer, "supposed to be heading to the airport or _at _the airport. Vacations never begin nicely. Where the hell is my backup?"

The squeal of tires was welcome to Carlton. He got out of the car, Calloway mimicking him. One of the marked Charger's came up the road, a firetruck kissing its bumper. Carlton questioned it until he saw the squad car's driver was Dobson, and the firetruck driver was "Dobson's Mike," otherwise known as Mike Alwin.

"Not that I'm not thrilled to see you," Lassiter said to Alwin, "but why the hell are you here?"

Alwin was unable to speak for himself as speedily as Dobson wished.

"I called him in on this one. You forgetting, Detective? Firefighters," he lobbed his hand on Mike's shoulder and gave it a shake, "have very long ladders. And this whole area is swarming with underground tunnels. I figured we could use him. He's more used to crawling into dark and cramped spaces than we are."

The tunnels. Lassiter leaned back on his heels, embarrassed that he hadn't thought of the tunnels.

"Look," Dobson started, "don't feel badly about this, all right? I only happened to think of it because I was doing some assignment today that had me labeling and filing some threatening and very anonymous letters. I came across one that was about Shawn. A hint or two had me guessing it might be someone in the CPA."

Mike and Dobson both retreated a half-step. They'd never seen Detective Lassiter's face get as red as it did then. One of his eyebrows began to twitch, and when he spoke it was done through clenched teeth and lips barely moving.

"There's—supposed—to—be—a—_background_—CHECK!"

Except that his voice rose in crescendo, and he wrenched away at the end. He waved a hand to get Calloway to come along with him.

"I know that," Dobson said to Mike. "I know that, and you know that, so—yeah. Anyway, you search the sewer grates and call for Shawn. I'll see what's going on inside the substation."


	9. Chapter 9

IX.  
_Back_

Water played a significant part in Shawn's memories.

That morning, he'd been harried and exhausted. Boredom's manifestations were, in him, something like the influences of a hot summer's day, so that he became lethargic and stupid. He was spoiled by himself, never doing what he did not want to do, now he was an adult.

But the thought of water rejuvenated and provoked.

There was a day last year that Shawn inadvertently broke through to his father. He didn't know how it happened, or why, or if it was him and his self-respect, or if it'd been his father and his reconnection with the shortness of life. But it had been done. For a day they traveled the same orbit, recognized that they were touched by the same sun.

The time came for the ride on the boat, out past the bonging buoys and under the distances smothered in twilight hues. Henry would not go with them. He gave Lassiter the keys, told Shawn not to get them lost, and stood on the pier to watch the four of them sail into a pristine sunset.

They laughed over stories told. They went through their childhoods, through times that Juliet was an amateur and Lassiter her non-responsive mentor, when Shawn was new and Gus's feelings toward the SBPD were numerous and incalculable. ("All I knew is that I was glad Shawn was getting paid for something I knew he could do. He stopped asking me for so much money. That made me happy.") Shawn's participation was minimal, his talk the kind that came in spurts; he worked as a detailer to Gus's reenactments, he asked questions that jettisoned Lassie's tales of youth into legends fit for Old Senora.

And when he'd done what he could, and had fallen back from the other three, below deck he found traces of his father's last visit, in old beer bottles and a newspaper from September. That Shawn found an image of himself on the front page did not bother him, and nothing like that registered much now—except that he thought he looked like he belonged in Old Senora himself, a rusty relic dug from ancient dirt. He turned the paper over, ignoring himself. He had a vague sensation he'd seen this newspaper before.

Back on deck, he read a certain article by the light of a couple of low-watt bulbs. The heaviest light of all spilled from the illuminated moon. It displayed that tale he'd been following, a saga from the sheriff department's side of the law.

A son was missing, and his father took up the quest to find him.

It was not uncommon. Such unfortunate things happened every day.

But what made it uncommon was the father. His lengths were unconventional, his reach was strong and without end. Shawn felt sorry for him. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to grope in the dark like that, to reach and reach and reach and find nothing.

Shawn had tried to help the sheriffs, but they wanted none of him. "You're the SBPD's business, not ours," said the deputy sent to handle him. Perhaps it was the presence of Lassiter, austere in a dark suit and deep blue shirt, the shine of his badge too bright for a deputy to stare at too long.

The moment was a first for Shawn. He'd never been embarrassed by his situation before, and never embarrassed to be a psychic detective, a freelancer who'd solved eighty or more cases.

Shawn was helpless. His limbs went slack. He didn't wear a badge, he wasn't austere or statuesque the way Lassiter was. He stared into the cold and unfeeling gaze across from him, above brown and tan and mustache. "Are you sure? I might be able to—"

"We don't need an outsider's help. We don't need _your _help. Go back to the SBPD."

Shawn betook himself where he belonged, and Lassiter's arm came over his shoulders and squeezed. They were alone in the lower hall, just passing through, and it was early in the morning though it seemed very late, and the company of no one but Lassie allowed the intensity of Shawn's dismissal to intensify.

"But I could _do _something," Shawn cried. He was pushed into the unforgiving cement wall, pinned there, shoulders held, mouth momentarily kissed.

"I know you could," Lassiter said softly. "You can only do as much good as everyone lets you. Remember the restrictions I used to put on you? Others are like that with psychics. Everyone's always a little afraid." Lassiter set his hand over Shawn's eyes, leaned close to reach an ear. "Like when all the lights suddenly go out."

Later that night, Shawn clipped the article from the paper and stuck it in a drawer someplace.

He never quite forgot it.

He never quite forgot anything.


	10. Chapter 10

X.  
_Forward_

Lassiter itched a sweaty spot on the back of his neck, still throwing his eyesight around, still finding that it landed abruptly on Dobson. "What did you say the guy's name was?"

"Parrino," Dobson repeated. "Owen Parrino. Richest son-of-a-bitch in the county. Ring a bell at all?"

Not yet for Lassiter, but he never quite remembered anything.

"Wasn't he that guy—with the kid who went missing?" Calloway ventured, seeing he was right by the way Dobson's face lit up. "Yeah, I remember that story. Never found the kid. The dad went nuts."

"Define 'nuts,'" demanded Lassiter. He wondered how much backup he would need, and he hated himself for making the assumption that Parrino was the one who'd taken Shawn. _Where _had he taken Shawn? Why—Lassiter didn't care so much for the why. It used to be one of his favorite words. He waved a hand that signaled for silence. "Calloway, call for three more units. Wherever Parrino is, he's not dumb enough to keep Shawn in the substation."

Dobson's look filled with dubiety. "How do you know he isn't?"

"He didn't get all that money being stupid," answered Lassiter, taking another look inside the substation—in the dark: the electric was off. "And Shawn gets himself into as much trouble as possible, when he gets into trouble. I'm going to have a look around the back alley. Check on your boy Alwin. Maybe he's found something."

Lassiter debated. Go through the whole building, front to back, or take the route lit by day? He chose the latter. Calloway was visible in the squad car, getting the call in. Lassiter believed Calloway would stay there. He walked on, eager to find a trace of Shawn, a sign of disturbance in a place that already appeared like wreckage spewed from the sea.

The sea. Carlton shifted a palm over his sweaty hair. He remembered the December boat ride, four friends in heavy winter coats shifting along the limp and inky waves of a cold sea. He remembered Shawn's interest in a newspaper from September. How Shawn had tried so hard to get the Sheriff's Department to listen and accept his services; he wanted no recompense, it was strictly charity. That seemed to worsen it for the deputy. He used opprobrious snarls and barbs to shoo them from the building. Carlton remembered that Shawn had let the incident fade from his mind; it released him from a sour and faraway mood. He remembered pangs of empathy for Shawn's feelings of helplessness, the frustration that came from being barred.

And now Owen Parrino had signed up for the SBPD CPA, and had gotten hold of Shawn. Why? How? No, never mind. _Where_. That was the question now.

Carlton dashed to the rear of the substation. What else could a father with a missing son do but force a renowned psychic detective to help?

Just at once, Carlton had his gun drawn, his stance in a crouch of defense. He aimed his weapon at the shape of a woman. She raised her hands in the air, surprised, breathing so hard it was visible through her tight coat.

"Lord Almighty, Carlton Lassiter, if you shoot me, so help me God—"

Carlton let out a sigh, rising. A handsome, stately woman—with a Gucci handbag and an Adam's apple. The pieces of himself shattered at the shock of her appearance soon fitted into place. "Lady Olga. Why—are you here?"

She blinked, ringed hand flat against her breast to settle jangled nerves. "There was a disturbance, like a great earthquake—and voices screaming from the dark side of the moon. All at once, they screamed—and I found myself in my car, coming here, and I don't even know where here is. Oh, the spirit guides were yelling at me so loudly that I had to come, Carlton! I don't know where we are, but this is about Shawn. Shawn, screaming for the moon. He's near here. I know, since the moon brought me here."

She moved aside. Carlton's head titled, one eye squinting.

A hand talented with graffiti and paint had used the back of the old building as a canvas. Upon it was a display of blues and purples, of flickers of white and gray and black that were planets and stars—and the moon, round and bulbous and smudged where craters would be, with small eyes black and red, dark and all-seeing.

He remembered Shawn reading the old newspaper by the light of a full moon.

"Should always pay attention to the moon, Lassie," Shawn had said that morning, after tripping, spilling some of Carlton's coffee, and blaming it on the grouchy moon. "She knows our fortunes better than we do. Who else can pull something as big as the sea?"

Carlton set his hand on the face of the angry moon. Shawn was in there—somewhere.


	11. Chapter 11

XI.  
_Back_

_The world is lonely and twisted for some people_, Shawn wrote. _It takes hold of their sanity and shakes it, creates ripples that go out and out and out. The ripples of broken health never really end. _

That was all he could write on the subject, all he could make his pen say. He closed the journal, set aside the pen, and wondered what would've happened if he hadn't jabbered on to Lassie about the moon, if Lady Olga wasn't as real a psychic as they come, and if Lassie didn't have the gumption to believe that coincidences were more than the potholes of reality.

He lifted the pen, opened the journal, and tried again to say what he meant to say, the thought that tickled at the back of his mind.

"The man who captured me lived between two worlds. He wasn't a psychic, but he knew things—things that only people with supernatural and highly abnormal minds can know. He knew about me, more than the info available on my Wikipedia page, and he could see into my past and he could read the thoughts my ancestors had about me. But he wasn't powerful enough, he said, to make sense of what he saw, what he felt. He was caught in a web of helplessness. He couldn't find his son, and the voices of the dead wouldn't answer him. Lassie was wrong, in a way: Parrino had no use for me. He knew I couldn't help him locate a missing child, not by my will alone. He didn't want me. He wanted to destroy me. To let me know what it was like to live in a place between life and death, reality and anti-reality. He threw me in a dark cavern beneath Santa Barbara streets. I did feel like I was in two worlds, or at the crevice where one world begins before it is sucked into the shadow of another. But, in a little while, I'll forget the taste of darkness, and I'll go home. I'll make the sheriffs believe that I can help, whether it's done by subterfuge or pleading. I will find that missing boy."

He shoved the journal under the couch cushion, hoping it would be forgotten until it was time to pack and leave for home.

In the kitchen, a cat twirled around his feet, and outside the glass doors lay a sleeping fantasy land, the snowy sheet pale silver-blue where the moon caressed from her perch in the starry sky. He opened the door when a plume of breath anticipated the arrival of Lassie. He pushed the cat from the opening with the inside of his foot, but she had no favor for the cold that tickled her nose.

Shawn rubbed his warm nose against Lassie's, helped pull off hat and gloves and two scarves. "You wanted snow and cold, Lass. This is not my fault."

"I didn't know it was going to be _this _cold here."

"We should've joined Uncle Fenz on his fishing trip to Florida."

"Maybe next time. Got the horses settled, some of the cats, too. It smells good." He'd tested the kitchen's air. "What'd you make me?"

"Your most favorite TV dinner _ever_." Shawn did not cook at the farm. He could play house at home, even pretend that he enjoyed the alchemy of cooking there. The farm was different.

"Did you get it written down? Oh, you're warm," Carlton said, pressing Shawn against him. "I know you said you'd feel better if you wrote it out."

"I wrote it out." Shawn hugged him hard. He smelled like hay, and there was the tang of ice about him, sharp and metallic. "I wrote it out—it's done—but I don't know if I feel better yet." His neck was nuzzled, his cheek kissed, each affectionate drop containing promises. "But I will."

Carlton let him go. Shawn stood in front of the glass doors again. The moon had shifted, the shadows wider and the silver-blue paler than before. She would be leaving soon, back to her infinite cave.

Shawn watched his hand leave a trace of itself against the glass, the heat of his skin reacting with the cold outside. He still had two weeks to do whatever he wanted, even if that was nothing at all. But he found himself wondering how long it might take before he could convince Carlton to go home early. Shawn wanted to get started. He wanted to dive into that world of repairing the lives of the helpless. He wanted to step out of that place between two worlds, and be happy, back in the place he belonged.


End file.
